Hall of Fame
Sidney S. “Buck” Anderson, Jr., played on the 1955 and 1956 Jones football teams.
The 1955 state championship team was undefeated in the regular season and went on to play Compton College (California) in the Junior Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. It was the first time an all-white athletic team from Mississippi played an integrated team.
That event was recognized in 2018 with a historical marker located on the Jones campus in a rose garden by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The 1955 team outscored its opposition 326-110 in the first nine games of the season. The Bobcats would lose to Compton 22-13 in the Junior Rose Bowl before a crowd of 57,000.
The 1956 Bobcats would post a 7-3 record.
Anderson, the son of Sid and Dorothy Anderson, grew up in Jones County, attended school in Moselle and graduated from Petal High School. He would go to Northeast Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana-Monroe) after graduating from Jones.
He met his wife, Libby McCoy, while in school in Monroe. After graduating from senior college, Anderson began his career as a salesman for McMillian Feed Mills in Memphis, Tennessee. Nine months later, he accepted an offer from Taylor Publishing Company and spent the next 20 years working with students designing and producing yearbooks.
In the late 70s, Anderson, his wife and three children (Art, Debbie and Sid) relocated to Fitzgerald, Georgia, as he took over his uncle Bennie Anderson’s businesses, which included the Dixie Peanut Company and Fitzgerald Motor Company.
Anderson is a dedicated member of the Central United Methodist Church, serving his church as a trustee, Finance Committee Chairman and lifetime appointee to the Long-Term Investments Committee.
Anderson expanded his interests to the community, becoming actively involved in church, the Chamber of Commerce, the local technical college and the local high school. He quickly saw what a dynamic impact organized fund-raising could have on citizens and their community. Institutions such as Jones and Petal High School have also benefited from his leadership and vision.
Anderson is a dedicated Bobcat Club member, Jones Honor Alum and Jones Foundation Board member. He has shared much of his leadership and benevolence with Jones, contributing lead gifts to the Jones Foundation’s Reaching New Heights campaign in 1999 and the Inspiring Greatness…It begins with us! campaign in 2007.
On a Waffle House napkin he wrote the first pledge to the Jones Foundation. On a napkin which cost less than five cents it helped the Foundation award over 582 scholarships
Anderson joined others in initiating and helping to fund Radionian yearbook staff workshops, campus beautification and landscaping projects and numerous scholarship endowments. He designed the stop sign project and the directional signs on campus.
He donated the oaks which are planted in front of Jones Hall – the naming of each tree provides historical information for the college. He donated the swing project by the walking trail by the lake. He initiated the phone number 1-866-WE-R-JCJC project to have that implemented.
Anderson drew plans for the water fountain project in front of the campus and worked with Dr. Jesse Smith on campus lighting stands and the project of putting names on campus buildings.
